The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) is exploring the possibility of offering adaptive bicycles/tricycles as part of an Adaptive Bikeshare Pilot. The goal of the program is to establish an opportunity for individuals of different abilities and ages, to have access to a healthy and fun form of transportation.

This program would likely function as a bike/trike “library,” where the user would pick-up and return their adaptive bike/trike at a specific location, such as a recreation center. Staff would be available to assist the user in adjusting the bike/trike and to provide basic instruction on its use.

After bike share was introduced,the researchers found a statistically significant difference in demand forparking between the two neighborhoods during morning and afternoon commuting hours, as well as a significant effect during lunchtime hours.

Bike-share trips replaced at most about 69 car trips per day,out of 2,250 daily parking events in the neighborhood of Shadyside. This is a 2 percent decrease in parking demand (adjusted for the lost curb parking space for the installation of the bike docks) after the program’s launch in 2015.

Okay, so that’s not exactly a sea change in commuting patterns. But while those numbers are small, the benefits of that change could add up.

The Phase II member survey results show that bikesharing is causing a diverse array of modal shifts within the different cities surveyed.

The survey also found that bikesharing reduced respondents driving by large amounts in all cities. In Montreal and Toronto, 29% and 35% reported driving less. In MinneapolisSaint Paul and Salt Lake City, 53% and 55% reported driving less, and in Mexico City, 53% reported driving less. Very few respondents reported driving more.

And since driving is a significant cause of GHG emissions, bad for public health and a cause of congestion this is exactly the outcome we'd expect.

I'll note that some of these effects are counter-balanced by people who shift from transit and walking. Those shifts involve more complicated trade-offs, with smaller impacts and are not as consistent as shifts from driving. For example, with walking

More respondents in Mexico City, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, and Salt Lake City increased walking than decreased it. In Montreal and Toronto, more reported walking less often than more.

Similar complexities are found with transit and biking. But those shifts don't change the fact that bikesharing reduces GHG emissions and improves health.

So it was surprising when the Rupert Murdoch-owned The Times recently had a disturbing headline about bikesharing "Boris bikes don't improve health or reduce pollution." It was also wrong. But there are layers of wrongness built into it. It's like a game of telephone where each person is not only getting the statement wrong due to normal errors, but each is also acting in bad faith.

The Times was a little wrong

The Times article was basically regurgitating a press release from the Royal Geographic Society about a recent study on bikesharing, so when it was quoting it - which it did often - it was at least getting that right. But even then it got the main things wrong.

They state that the study shows that bike sharing schemes "do not cut carbon dioxide emissions" a claim highlighted, with the most damage, in the title. But that's wrong. The claim from the RGS study is that "Bike share schemes ... are not very effective at ...reducing CO2 emissions" which is not the same thing as doing nothing. I'm not very effective at cleaning dishes, but they aren't as dirty when I finish as when I started (sorry everyone I've ever shared a house with).

The article goes on to claim that bikesharing bikes "aren't having a positive effect on public health" and that "people on the outskirts [of cities], who are likely to be on lower incomes and in greater need, do not benefit." Each of these statements wrongly represent what the RGS press release says. As the press release says there aren't very effective, not that they're doing nothing. The underlying studies make it clear that they DO have benefits for health and CO2 reduction and that they do benefit people with lower incomes.

But even the press release doesn't match the work by Dr. Médard de Chardon. [The press release is about the presentation of a study by Médard de Chardon. It doesn't say which one, but much of the territory is covered in his study on "Bicycle sharing system 'success' determinants" so I'll be using that in this post]

The press release states that

The total amount of carbon produced in London from the rebalancing vans is not offset by the amount saved from use of the bike share scheme.

They are not very effective at improving health

They are not very effective at lessening road congestion

They are not very effective at promoting transport equity

But here again the claims in the release state things with more certainty than they're stated in the paper and they elevate the negative results of outliers without noting that they are the exception. For example on item 1 above, the paper says.

Multiple studies have shown that publicized estimates of carbon dioxide reductions are often overstated as only a small portion of car trips are replaced using Bike sharing systems (BSS) (Ricci, 2015). In the case of London it is estimated that the vehicles rebalancing bicycles within the system may surpass any emission reductions from modal shift (Fishman et al., 2014a).

So the rebalancing vehicles MAY offset emissions, but they may not. Furthermore, of the four cities studied by Fishman, London is the only city where they found that mode shift didn't offset re-balancing, so it seems deceptive to make that the "example."

The claim that they aren't very effective at improving health is also not backed up by the study. Instead it says:

The shift from sedentary travel modes to cycling has clear health benefits but net quantities are overstated due to the reductionin walking, which has greater health benefits for a fixed distance traveled.

Overstated is not a synonym for "ineffective."

On congestion, again the PR gets it wrong. The study calls the claims of congestion reduction "unproven", it does not say that they are proven in effective.

Finally, on equity, the study does make the claim that bike sharing "members [are] more likely be wealthier, younger, white, male and own a car, compared to the local population" and that it is "one of the most inequitable forms of sustainable transportation infrastructures.” So one out of four isn't bad. Perhaps this is the part he should show as an example. [More on the equity issue below]

The release also asks whether a bike-share system in which each bike is used less than twice a day (as many are) is the best use of public funding for cycling. That's a great question, but he's not an economist and he, as near as I can tell, he doesn't even try to answer it.

Then he really goes off the rails.

“In reality, bike sharing schemes are a false solution. They look sophisticated and are technologically cool, but they don’t create much useful or progressive change.

It’s worrying that we are getting bike share schemes instead of concrete improvements to transport infrastructure.”

A solution to what? His own studies show that they have many small, but real benefits. That seems to indicate that it's at least PART of the solution to some of the problems he brings up. And if it doesn't create much useful progress, the question is compared to what? He's not arguing that bike sharing is a bad thing, only that other things are better. That's always a complicated question and he makes a poor case that something else is.

I do agree with him when he says that it's important to more effectively redistribute public space for better cycling infrastructure, and if we have to make a choice between street changes and bike sharing (as they did in London) it's wise to ask which is the better investment. But this press release, and the 2017 study, don't do that.

The study is wrong too, and isn't really a study of 'success determinants'

Again, I'm going to use the 2017 study here and I recognize that he may have a new study out which would make this wrong.

Médard de Chardon's study is really a study of how many Trips each Bike takes per Day (TBD) in various systems (Of the 75 systems studied CaBi is 22nd with 3.0 TBD, 3rd best in the US). In that sense it's useful and interesting.

Where it gets off track is where it tries to push an agenda - namely that because many systems have a low TBD, bike-sharing is a poor use of resources.

He first claims that "success" for bikesharing is not defined. And for that he cites a paper that states that

Whilst predominantly enabling commuting, bike sharing allows users to undertake other key economic, social and leisure activities. Benefits include improved health, increased transport choice and convenience, reduced travel times and costs, and improved travel experience. These benefits are unequally distributed, since users are typically male, younger and in more advantaged socio-economic positions than average. There is no evidence that bike sharing significantly reduces traffic congestion, carbon emissions and pollution.

But, at least for Capital Bikeshare, that's not true. When the program was starting, MWCOG submitted an application to the US DOT for a TIGER grant. In that they clearly stated what they saw as the benefits/goals.

The benefits they foresaw were user cost savings, user travel time savings, increased access, congestion reduction, emissions reduction, healthcare cost savings and accident reduction. They also saw benefits in getting users to purchase and use their own bikes - something that just doesn't show up in tpbpd.

Then they calculated the value of each trip at $1.20. So as long as the subsidy is less than that, it would seem the system is a success. I did the calculations after one year and showed that it was. Now if Médard de Chardon wants to reanalyze the MWCOG calculations, update them and/or make them more robust that would be great. But he doesn't. And I'll note that of the 9 benefits listed here, his paper misses 5 of them.

He then goes on to state that the benefits for road and public transit congestion, carbon emissions, cycling modal share, health and equity have been shown to be hard to measure, trivial or non-existent. But the studies he cites contradict that. One is quoted above listing all the benefits. Another merely says that "the majority of scheme users are substituting from sustainable modes of transport rather than the car" which is not the same as saying there is no mode shift from cars or even from modes that do less for health. The third, written before CaBi started doesn't even make that claim. But even the most damning of these, by Ricci, which says that "there is no evidence that bike sharing significantly reduces traffic congestion, carbon emissions and pollution." (emphasis mine) also notes that nearly 20% of all bikeshare trips were shifted from car. There is no explanation for how hundreds of thousands of trips can be shifted from car to bikeshare without reducing congestion, emissions and pollution. It seems the word "siginficantly" is doing all the work. Médard de Chardon does cite a study that claims that, in the case of London, the low car-to-bike shift rate combined with much higher than average rebalancing miles, leads to an increase in carbon emissions. It makes the case that in a city where few drive, bike-sharing will do little to reduce driving.

But one thing Médard de Chardon does is cherry-picks his studies. If one claims that it does little to reduce emissions, but does improve health. He'll cite it when he talks about emissions and use another when he wants to talk about health. For example, he cites one study to make the claim that

London’s bicycle sharing system has positive health impacts overall, but these benefits are clearer for men than for women and for older users than for younger users.

Which sounds less negative.

When he notes that the systems have benefits

They provide an alternative mode of transport, increase accessibility, trip resilience and flexibility, lower the barrier to exploring urban cycling, increase the visibility of bicycles, bicycle awareness by drivers and normalizing the image of cyclists in casual clothing

He then attacks those benefits on the grounds that they "do not spread evenly among classes and race," which is a way to minimize them. For that he relies on Melody L. Hoffman's "Bike lanes are white lanes."

There may be lessons to be gleaned from that book, but we should be clear that it's not a "study" of equity, it's not based on such a study and when she writes about bike sharing she's talking entirely about one system - Minneapolis' Nice Ride - and almost exclusively relying on interviews. So her claim that bike sharing is "one of the most inequitable forms of sustainable transportation infrastructure" in the United States; that's her opinion. It's not based on some metric of inequality and a comparison of various "forms of sustainable transportation infrastructure."

It is true that there's an equity issue in bike sharing, but that is true within biking as a whole, and so if the argument is that we should not invest in bikesharing to instead invest in protected bike lanes, you're not really solving the problem. It's also true that Médard de Chardon's study does a bad job of making the case about equity. And it makes no attempt to show why a system which unevenly spreads benefits among classes and races does not benefit those with lower incomes. It's possible the benefits are uneven and that low income people still benefit.

Finally, he makes a dubious claim that 1 TBD is a significant threshold since.

This value is psychologically important as systems below this have some bicycles being unused each day. More worrisome are the 10 systems with ratings below 0.5 TDB, as this means most bicycles are not used on a daily basis

It may be that 1 TBD is so low that the costs exceed the benefits. Or that 0.5 is. But if so, it won't be for psychologically symbolic reasons. And it likely won't be universal. In an un-system like New York's, where the taxpayers pay nothing, who cares how low the TBD is? And as he notes, any attempt to maximize TBD run counter to efforts to increase equity.

Just to pile on a bit, he also ignores the number of people who are encouraged by bikeshare to buy and ride their own bikes.

This is the heart of his failure to define bike sharing as a false solution. He has no idea what level of TBD/subsidy is cost-effective. He has defined no set of metrics for defining benefits. He makes to attempt to set a cost on systems. It may be that London's system increases emissions but is still cost-effective.

It would be fair of him to say that systems need to define goals and metrics for success. That they need to analyze those regularly to see if those goals are being met and to what extent. That they need to try to define those metrics as benefits and compare them to costs. But he's simply not in a position to call bike-sharing a false solution. Certainly not across the board, and not in a city like DC with 3.0 TBD and high car-to-bike mode shifting.

So, I would love to see a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of bike-sharing across a broad spectrum of cities. But this isn't it. And without one I don't see how anyone can claim that they are a "false solution."

It's been a wild year for bikesharing. Dockless wasn't even a thing people talked about a year ago and then it was everywhere and then it started to be supplanted by scooters and then it started going away, except for the dockless e-bikes which are sticking around and soon to be joined by docked e-bikes and also there is something about "lock to" bikes. It's all very exciting and like a roulette wheel no one really knows how it will end. Also like a roulette wheel, people are betting lots of money on it.

When this report was written in 2014, bikeshare was already changing transportation, growing rapidly and adding users.

In 2012, 22 IT-based public bikesharing systems were operating in the United States, with a total of 884,442 users and 7,549 bicycles. Four IT-based programs in Canada had a total of 197,419 users and 6,115 bicycles. Two IT-based programs in Mexico had a total of 71,611 users and 3,680 bicycles. [CaBi accounted for more than 10% of US users]

Between January and December 2013, 14 programs launched in North America, and one closed (i.e., Bike Nation Anaheim).

Those numbers, while large, now seem quaint. Dallas alone had 30,000 bikes at one point this year. And bikesharing was causing modal shifts from buses, rail and cars.

Here in DC, the big changes are that a few of the dockless companies have left, others have been bought with those staying shifting hard to scooters, the pilot will end soon with new bikes required to be lock-to and CaBi bringing e-bikes into the mix.

That leaves Spin, Jump and Lime (and the scooter companies, but I'll let WashScoot cover them). And of course Capital Bikeshare, who's operator/supplier motivate was purchased by Lyft this summer (Did I not mention that). While I'm at it, Lime was bought by Uber. Lime has been expanding its scooter fleet and recently announced that it was going to all scooters, just as Spin is recently did. In a recent meeting with Lime staff they indicated that they would be scooter-heavy in the summer, but likely trade out some scooters for bikes in the winter, because they noticed use trends were seasonal, but the recent regulations seem to - at least in part - change that calculation.

the District’s current cap of 400 vehicles per operator—whether scooters or bikes, or both—is “very, very low” given D.C.’s size, and that a new requirement for dockless bikes to have lock capabilities is not “in line” with Lime’s strategy.

So, if DC's goal is to give residents a lot more transportation options, I'd say this current policy isn't succeeding as well as it could. [It's nice to have scooters and Jump bike, but we can do better I think].

Motivate, which also operates the Bay Area's Ford GoBike bike-share program, launched 250 e-bikes there in April following Jump's entry into the area. But there's a cap on the number of bikes because GoBike demanded one as they argued that they had an exclusive contract on docked bikes there. Now people want the cap raised, and also people there blocked bikes from some neighborhoods and maybe they regret that. Whew... Anyway, CaBi is bringing e-bikes here soon too, so if your head isn't spin yet, it will be.

Soon we’ll be introducing new pedal-assist bicycles as another solution for getting across Metro-DC. Therefore, we’ve changed our Rental Agreement and Liability Waiver and Release to include policies related to pedal-assist bicycles.

The e-bike revolution is totally different from the dockless bikeshare one, but they're happening at the same time, and in some cases overlapping. "Electric bicycle sales in the United States have nearly tripled in the past three years, making them the fastest-growing type of bicycle on the market."

Starting in September, riders will have to lock dockless bikes to racks or street signs. More permanent rules will be drafted by the end of the year.

There's a lot to not like about it. First, there's a process complaint. It has come as a surprise, even to me, because there wasn't much communication about it. Like a simple "Hey we're thinking of going lock-to, how would users feel about that?" Then it feels like a poor reaction. Many times people have said that what we need to do is set aside space for dockless bikes and make it clear that "Dockless bikes go here." We're not trying that (which admittedly requires more work than simply changing the rules), we're just going straight to lock-to. Which brings us to the next complaint, even lock-to can be self locked. The lock-to bikes, like Jump, don't actually know if you've locked to something or not so they can just be left anywhere too, though I've never found one self locked. And then, limiting ourselves to lock-to means that some companies will never come here. As far as I can tell it's just Jump and Pace (which isn't in DC). Of course, as noted above, we're basically down to a few Lime bikes and Jump so that's not a big deal.

In addition, we're leaving the caps in place which I'm becoming more and more convinced is a bad idea. Especially when the cap is for scooter OR bikes. That means companies aren't offering bikes, not because the bikes are a bad idea, but because every bike means one fewer scooter and the scooters make more money. If there must be a cap, and I'm not convinced there must, then let's break into separate groups. Especially now that Ofo and MoBike are gone. Surely we can handle 800 more bikes with them out of the picture. But, we should really be increasing the cap (which I don't think we need) with each extension of the pilot. If the point is to learn what the effect is, then let's gradually increase the number like someone slowly entering a pool to see what happens at 500, 600 or 1000 bikes per company. There's a hunger for these vehicles,

From the day the systems launched in September, through June of this year, users took more than 625,000 rides on the bikes and scooters, according to DDOT.

That's a little under the pace of CaBi's first year, which got a million trips in the first year, but it shows that people want to ride them. Anyway, the chance to weigh in starts now...

By next year, DDOT aims to have a permanent bikeshare program with equipment standards, fees, data sharing requirements and a mandate to serve all eight wards.

It will take public comment on the issue in September and roll out new rules in January. Residents can also weigh in by emailing dockless.bikeshare@dc.gov

Things are in as much flux elsewhere as they are here. There are as many stories about dockless bikes as there are cities, and every city has taken a different approach with different results. From the wild west of Dallas, to heavily regulated places like San Francisco and Chicago. Cities have capped the number of bikes, limited the areas where they can operate and even mandated which kinds of bikes can and can't be used.

Chicago passed a rule banning wheel-lock dockless bikes. Instead bikes need to lock-to something else, which is what DC just announced they're doing.

Bikeshare has failed in a few places, Seattle and Baltimore to name a couple. In Seattle, much has been made about the helmet law, but in apolitical, they make the case that the real problems had to do with a slow roll-out, a company with no track record, political scandal and a difficult system. I'm no fan of mandatory helmet laws, but Vancouver has one and their bikeshare system has been going strong for two years now. Also, we give the local DOTs a lot of grief, but it's important to remember that CaBi lasting longer than its equipment did was not a guarantee back in 2010. Success takes good management.

Even Paris, the city that kicked off the whole bikesharing phenomenon, has had some problems. After a decade of success, the city handed over management of the program to a private consortium who promised to upgrade the fleet and replace mechanical bikes with electric ones (30% of them at least). But people are complaining that the system doesn't work. It's become something called the velibfiasco.

A change of company running the Vélib scheme has resulted in far fewer bikes available and hundreds of docking stations out of order, not to mention bikes being vandalized or stolen. So with locals and tourists fuming, Mayor Anne Hidalgo has weighed in by giving the new operator an ultimatum: fix things by September, or else.

Worldwide, bikeshare is a mixed bag, though the number of bikes and users continue to grow indicating that the mix has more success than failure. The industry is still trying to figure out what works. Public-private partnerships seem good, but not exclusively so. Helmet laws bad, but not that bad. Functional systems are good. Small systems are bad. E-bikes are doing well. Cheap bikes that fall apart are not. [Some of this seems obvious in retrospect].

So it's going to be more wild times going forward before it all shakes out.

One thing I feel confident about is this: it will all be different next year when Luz Lazo will be writing about how no one likes the new Cavorite lined hover-wagons that are terrifying pedestrians.

A federal report on bikesharing a few years ago included some conclusions about who uses it that spawned several articles on the subject. The report from the Mineta Institute stated that

Data have shown that bikesharing users are more likely be male, Caucasian, wealthier, younger, and have attained higher educational degrees than the general population in which a given bikesharing program resides. As a form of public transportation, it is pivotal that bikesharing serve all socio-economic classes and ethnicities in an urban area.

The last line of that is debatable. Equity is important, but we wouldn't call the bus a failure if rich, white people didn't use it. We should make bikesharing available to all; we should understand why women, POC, less educated and lower-income people aren't using it more and we should make reasonable accommodations to break down barriers to them. It will, for obvious reasons, probably always be true that bikeshare users skew younger. But, without knowing WHY users are predominately male, Caucasian, wealthier and higher educated it's foolish to call changing that "pivotal".

Anyway it's important to note that some of these imbalances are bigger than others, and that in no case are they exclusive.

Credit-card ownership, required by some systems, is a non-starter for many low-income city residents. A lack of bike infrastructure in poorer areas certainly doesn't help. There's strong evidence that poor people don't view cycling as favorably as some might expect, which could explain why financial-aid and membership-subsidy programs haven't eliminated the income gap. Cultural barriers may exist above and beyond any money factors.

The new report points to a more basic problem: Many systems don't make much of an effort to place bike-share stations in low-income neighborhoods.

That isn't the case with CaBi. While some people complain that there aren't enough stations EOTR, that has more to do with it's location away from downtown than CaBi's lack of effort. There are, at my last count, as many stations in low-income Ward 8 as there are in high-income Ward 3, this despite the fact that beyond Ward 3 CaBi extends into Montgomery County, but that there are no stations in PGC east of the river. DDOT chooses where stations go, and they make an effort (inadequate or not) to place them in all neighborhoods. In fact I've heard as much complaining about this being a waste - putting a station where it is hardly used - as I do that it's unfair.

Station placement is an issue in some places, but it's not enough to explain the imbalance. Both CaBi and Philadelphia's Indego have shown that, as both have considerable outreach programs, but still see white people over-represented. Even if we take income out of it, white people are still more likely to ride.

9 percent of low-income people of color, 18 percent of high-income people of color, 13 percent of low-income white residents, and 29 percent of high-income white residents have ridden bikeshare in their cities

Matthew Yglesius, writing for Vox offered another theory.

Maybe rich people love bikeshare because bikeshare is like vacation travel or theater tickets — a high-end recreational amenity that people spend money on when they have money to spare, but that less-fortunate families find it easy to go without.

It's an interesting idea, but it's built upon some fallacies that make me highly skeptical.

Bike share also isn't an especially reliable means of transportation....What bike share is good for is occasional recreational riding for someone who's not really counting on it.

I use CaBi all the time. Always for transportation and I find it very reliable. More reliable than Metro. According to CaBi studies, 65% of Members use Bikeshare to get to work.

I'm...a Capital Bikeshare member, because sometimes on a nice day when I'm not with my cycling-averse wife it's fun to pedal. A bikeshare membership is less of a hassle that storing a bike I rarely use. And I'm lucky enough to be able to afford the membership fee pretty easily.

My guess is that I'm a pretty typical bike share member in that regard.

My guess is he's wrong. In fact, anecdotally speaking I've heard more about people buying their own bike after becoming a bikeshare membership.

Another theory was that POC just aren't as interested in bikeshare. But...

[a study out of Portland State] shows that residents of low-income, majority-minority neighborhoods have an overwhelmingly favorable view of bike share. What many residents of these neighborhoods lack is not a desire to ride, but information on discount programs, access to safe streets and protective gear, and reassurance about liability and hidden fees.

73 percent of the total respondents and 74 percent of low-income people of color agreed that “bike share is useful for people like me.” Ninety-three percent of all respondents said bike share is good for the city, and 89 percent said it was good for the neighborhood. Low-income people of color agreed with these statements at a rate of 89 percent and 86 percent, respectively.

Low-income people of color were far more concerned than white people about being the victim of crime or harassment while riding a bike. Many also said that access to free or discounted helmets would encourage them to ride.

I don't recall where, but someone asked if instead of pushing bikeshare into poor neighborhoods, would we be better off subsidizing a full-service bike shop? It's true that there still isn't a bike shop east of the river despite the need for one. I'd love to see DC make one work beyond the pop-up bike shop (though those are great). Perhaps they could build space for one within libraries or recreation centers and then hire a vendor. Subsidizing a bike shop in "bike shop desserts" is a great idea. I don't know if it would give better value than subsidizing bike share in those same neighborhoods. We should do both.

Which brings us to dockless bikes. Pretty early on people began to observe that the users of dockless bikes were different than the users of CaBi. Which is great (or not for some people).

Spin placed about 7 percent of its fleet east of the Anacostia in September 2017. By November, that number had swelled to about 17 percent, thanks to riders shifting bikes to that side of town. Mobike has counted hundreds of trips per week in Wards 7 and 8. And LimeBike’s numbers show that nearly six percent of all trips start or end east of the River.

People have again tried to hypothesize why this is. If it's hard to determine why POC don't use CaBi, it's also hard to figure out why they do use dockless.

Besides flexibility, dockless bikes have other features that appeal to this clientele. Anna, who rode to the Georgetown waterfront, said she prefers riding dockless because the bikes are easier to rent than those of Capital Bikeshare.

Similar to Capital Bikeshare, the majority of dockless bike riders are white, but the Virginia Tech survey found that the second-largest ethnic group of dockless bike riders are black, a distinction with Capital Bikeshare data that shows African Americans are the fourth-largest user group. A larger proportion of dockless bike riders earn less than $35,000 a year as compared to Capital Bikeshare riders.

That's a good thing. If we have a service that is providing transportation options to people in need of them, that's good. All the better that it's a clean, healthy and safe one.

Maybe we don't know why underserved groups prefer dockless to docked. It would be good to know in order to make both programs better, but in the end it might be like Vitamin D. We knew for a long time that eating liver was good for you without knowing that it was because of the Vitamin D, and then it took us time to figure out why Vitamin D was good for you. Similarly, knowing that dockless makes bikesharing appealing to groups that were not responding to docked is reason enough to support the program, even if we don't know why.

This is one reason why expanding dockless is important. It will make our transportation system more equitable and give people more choice. In addition we should try to encourage - and even subsidize - bike shops in underserved neighborhoods. And we should expand CaBi stations into close-in PG County areas while also investing in biking facilities that would make PG County, Ward 7 and Ward 8 more bikeable.

Bike advocacy for me has always been primarily about making biking possible for the people who want it, and bikesharing, both dockless and docked, is something that does that.

Capital Bikeshare is slated to widen its reach in 2018 with the addition of more than 100 stations, hundreds more bikes and a larger coverage area — investments that are worth more than $5 million of federal, local and private funds.

next year’s expansion, officials say, [will] put Capital Bikeshare’s distinctive red bikes in new territory from National Harbor to Hyattsville in Maryland, and Reagan National Airport and Falls Church in Virginia.

In Prince George’s, officials say they are reviewing vendor contracts before putting in an order for up to 325 bikes and 35 stations that will roll out in the spring.

Alexandria is planning to submit a $650,000 order for equipment this fall, including 10 more docking stations to be installed next spring. The city has funds for 50 stations through 2020, but officials say they will evaluate bike-sharing needs next year before proceeding.

Montgomery, which will have 73 stations at the end of the year, is planning about $660,000 in program expansion in 2018. That includes eight stations in the White Flint and Twinbrook areas and a seven-station network planned for the Rock Spring area of North Bethesda.

And Arlington is moving to acquire 15 more stations next year, including one for the airport.

At this month's DC Bicycle Advisory Committee someone announced that CaBi at DCA was going to happen by the end of the summer (I think. I'm going by memory.)

In both options the facility would link to the Mount Vernon Trail (or at least "could"). Neither facility looks like it's designed for cycling (more pedestrian oriented) but it may be that cycling will be allowed. I don't expect the connection to be as crowded as the photos show.

There are no renderings of the MVT connections, but it looks like maybe they would be elevators (sigh).

The presentations also notes some possible upgrades to the current MVT spur (which would be "investigated" in the short term, but built ????). These improvements include widening the MVT spur's CSXT underpass, widening the George Washington Parkway underpass with a new tunnel adjacent to the current underpass, and adding a spur from the MVT to the airport garage.

The planning, design and environmental review process is scheduled to take 6 years so don't get too excited about this now.

A new, better connection between the MVT and DCA would be great as the current one is a little hard to follow. And I would love some better bike parking. Perhaps a cage or "pod" like this. Combine that with bike share and a bridge and it could be an easy bike trip for many.

A recent people for bikes blog post (and the better bike share blog post it's based on) try to tease out how bike share has increased bike commuting in the District. They make a noble effort, but there are just too many data limitations - in my opinion - to make any conclusions. But, my gut and my own observations tend to agree with the conclusions. Those being that bike share increased bike commuting across all races, but not equally.

There's a lot of problems with the data though. First it relies on American Community Survey data and as they note

When measuring commuting habits for all demographics except gender, the ACS uses the category “taxi, motorcycle, bicycle, or other means.” Lumping in “taxi,” “motorcycle,” and “other” along with bicycles makes it harder to draw specific conclusions, especially given the rise of ridesharing during the same time period.

Then, there's the problem that it doesn't really tell us anything about bike sharing. Bike commuting could be up because of better streets, a younger demographic, changes tastes, rising oil prices, etc...Of course, we know from Capital Bikeshare survey data that many people did start commuting by bikeshare or bikeshare and transit once they got a membership, but that's not mentioned in the articles. One thing that should help with this is that MWCOG plans to ask about bikesharing in their next "State of the Commute" Survey.

But we're not sure from ACS data how much the increase in TiMBO data is due to biking and we aren't sure how much any change in bike commuting is due to bikeshare. Still, it's good news to find out that a wide variety of people might be biking more.

First of all, Howard Road will get a protected bike lane (PBL) from the Anacostia Metro entrance to South Capitol Street. In the rendering above, you can see a cyclist a riding in the Howard Road PBL and you can see the PBL again in the rendering below.

The PBL will be 9 feet wide and separated by a 3 foot wide barrier.

The cycletrack will transition to a sidepath leading to a plaza by the Anacosita Metro Station garage. That plaza will feature a new Capital Bikeshare station and bike racks.

There will be 672 bicycle spots across two below-grade parking levels, compared to 562 vehicular parking spaces (425 office, 117 residential and 20 retail). That's about 40 more bike parking spaces than required by zoning regs (90 Short Term Spaces and541 Long Term Spaces).

And finally, DDOT requested that every resident over 16 be given a Capital Bikeshare membership and an annual car sharing membership, but the developers have asked to instead give either a car sharing or Capital Bikeshare membership because, they argue, "car share memberships are not as popular as they once were" because people would rather use ride hailing.

This project, when combined with the new Douglass Bridge, should do a lot to make it easier to bike across the Anacostia and into the neighborhoods east of the river, among other things.

There was a hearing on this last month, and in the transcript there's a humorous discussion about dockless bikeshare.

[Commissioner Peter May (NPS)] - first question is, what's with the bike helmet? Is that just a prop? Or did you ride your bike here?

[Tom Skinner (Red Brick)] - Actually that's the Mobike, which I guess are taking over from Capital Bikeshare. So, that's the new way to --

May - So you rode over here on a Mobike and that's your helmet? [WC: I'd like to see this helmet that caused May to comment on it]

Skinner - That's my helmet. I also noticed that you came by bike last time to this down here.

May - And I did tonight. But --

Skinner - And I do appreciate -- I do appreciate it.

[Bill Hellmuth, HOK Architects with Redbrick] - He also lured me into using one of those bikes the other day. And I'm not used to riding around in downtown D.C. So I immediately get on K Street and go under the tunnel on my way back to the office in Georgetown. And I thought I was going to be dead.

{Laughter}

MR. HELLMUTH: So, it's a great service. But never go under the vehicular tunnel because of the traffic.

COMMISSIONER MAY: I would agree with that. And also be very careful where you park your Mobike. Because we're having real problems with them showing up in the wrong places. All right. So anyway, I was just curious about that and whether it was like part of the presentation. Or just, you know. Anyway, that's good. I know the Chairman appreciates knowing how much you love riding around the city.

Later, when talking about the Metro plaza improvements

Zoning Commission Vice Chair Robert Miller - Is the Capital Bikeshare though as part of what you're proffering to put on the WMATA property?

MR. SKINNER: Yes. Yes.

Miller: Yes.

MR. SKINNER: And I mean, and we also wonder whether like the orange and the yellow bikes may, you know, take over the city. So, it's subject toward the teething problems they have with where they're left and everything like that. But, whatever is appropriate in terms of bikeshare, we're big advocates and, you know, fans of that.

Adoption of the new TransAction plan marks the first time the NVTA has updated it since passage of HB (House Bill) 2313 in 2013, which “established a dedicated, sustainable funding stream for transportation in Northern Virginia and allows the Authority to begin fulfilling its mission to address regional transportation challenges.”

Here's a list of the included bike projects

Construct protected bike lanes on both sides of Route 7 between Alexandria and Seven Corners. Connect with City of Falls Church's bicycle network. Construct trail along Route 7 from Leesburg to Alexandria.

Introduce and expand bikesharing services in Herndon in coordination with County regional system

Install up to 24 bikesharing stations along Route 29, Route 7, Sycamore Street, Roosevelt Street, and W&OD Trail in the City of Falls Church.

Construct multimodal improvements, including new or restructured bus bays, at the current East Falls Church Metrorail Station. These include bicycle and pedestrian connections, improve access and signalization on North Sycamore Street and Washington Boulevard, and bikesharing stations.

Alexandria Bike and Pedestrian Trails Construction and Reconstruction;a. Reconstruct Holmes Run Trail from North Ripley Street to I-395;b. Construct trails along local streets in the Beauregard Street and Van Dorn Street corridor. This facility will provide a north-south connection to the City's Holmes Run Trail, running eastwest, and connecting bicycle users to Mark Center corridor;c. Construct pedestrian and bicycle bridge over Holmes Run at Morgan Street;d. Implement and construct projects in the City's Pedestrian/Bicycle Plan; ande. Construct bicycle improvements along Royal Street between Jones Point and Bashford Street, including signage and traffic calming.

Improve bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in and around the Columbia Pike corridor, including bikeways, bikesharing, and key sidewalk improvements, to convert SOV trips to, within, and between activity center areas from car to bicycle/pedestrian. Includes parallel bike routes along 9th Street, 11th Street, and 12th Street in the vicinity of Columbia Pike

Develop a system of coordinated mobility hubs along major corridors to fully integrate transit, bikesharing, carsharing, ridesharing, pedestrians, bicycling, ride hailing, and other shared use services.

Improve bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in and around the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor, including bikeways, bikesharing, and key sidewalk improvements, to convert SOV trips to, within, and between Metrorail station areas from car to bicycle/pedestrian, and to enable access to/from Metrorail stations to high-density housing and job centers. Includes a designated bicycle lane along North Lynn Street and along Fort Myer Drive between Lee Highway at Rosslyn Circle and Fairfax Drive south of Arlington Boulevard

Improve bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in and around Arlington's Blue/Yellow Metrorail corridor, including bikeways, bikesharing, and key sidewalk improvements, to convert SOV trips to, within, and between Metrorail station areas from car to bicycle/pedestrian, and to enable access to/from Metrorail stations to high-density housing and job centers.

Enhance regional bike routes (W&OD), including separate trails for walking and bicycling, updated crossings to increase safety, and lighting to keep trail open all year in the Falls Church area.

Improve on- and off-road bicycle and pedestrian facilities, routes, and infrastructure along and adjacent to City of Fairfax corridors to provide better access to Metrorail and regional trails. Expand bikesharing, bike storage, and signage. Includes the extension of the George Snyder Trail.

Implement bike rental stations in Town of Vienna in coordination with wider County and regional system. Extend Davis Drive (Route 868) from Glenn Drive (Route 864) to Fairfax County line at the future bridge over Dulles Toll Road (Route 267). Realign Rock Hill Road with Davis Drive. Construct a four-lane roadway over the Dulles Toll Road from Sunrise Valley Drive on the south side to Davis Drive extension in Loudoun County on the north side. The project would include pedestrian and bicycle facilities

Construct a four-mile segment of the high-capacity transitway on Duke Street within City of Alexandria. Reconstruct Duke Street from Wheeler Avenue to Jordan Street with a center left-turn lane. Construct bicycle and pedestrian improvements along corridor

Implement BRT service between the Pentagon and Kingstowne via Mark Center and Van Dorn Metrorail Station. Includes construction of a four-mile segment of dedicated bus lanes between Van Dorn Metrorail Station and King Street. The project also provides pedestrian and bicycle facilities within the corridor.

Widen Arlington Boulevard (Route 50) to six lanes between the City of Fairfax and Arlington County. The project would include intersection improvements, including signalization improvements, and pedestrian and bicycle facilities.

Improved connections and circulation for all modes near the Northfax intersection. Improvements to and along Fairfax Boulevard in the vicinity of the Northfax intersection including pedestrian/bicycle safety,

Intersection improvements at Fairfax Circle to improve vehicular and pedestrian/bicycle mobility and safety

Traffic improvements for the intersection of Mount Vernon Avenue and Glebe Road, including signalization, accommodation for pedestrians, and turn lane channelization. Construct improvements at Mount Vernon Avenue and Four Mile Road intersection, including pedestrian/bicycle improvements. Construct pedestrian/bicycle bridge over Four Mile Run between Commonwealth Avenue and Eads Street. Construct Mount Vernon Avenue and Russell Road intersection safety improvements to accommodate pedestrian and bicyclists, which may entail intersection and parking configuration redesign. Construct a pedestrian/bicycle link from the Potomac Yard Trail to connect to the Four Mile Run Trail on the south side of Four Mile Run, and to the Mount Vernon Trail. Construct Oakville Triangle improvement projects

Expand multimodal transportation capacity and safety in the Lee Highway corridor, providing viable options to move more people without increasing the volume of single-occupant vehicles. Includes addition of bicycle facilities along Route 29 corridor

Transit and pedestrian/bicycle connections along Sycamore Street and Roosevelt Street with a bridge overpass connecting to planned redevelopment in Seven Corners.

Construct a shared used path on both sides of Route 28 from Prince William County line to Dulles Toll Road.

Construct a trail along Route 29 from Dixie Hill Road to East Falls Church Metrorail Station.

A project to link the WB&A Trail in Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties will receive $4.7 million from the Transportation Alternatives Program. The project will link the WB&A Trail in Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties with a bridge over the Patuxent River. The 700-foot bicycle and pedestrian bridge will complete a key missing link in the WB&A Trail, which was built on the abandoned railroad corridor of the Washington, Baltimore & Annapolis Electric Railway. Once constructed, bicyclists and other trail users will be able to travel more safely than sharing the roadways with motorized vehicles on MD 450, MD 3 and MD 175. The WB&A Trail is a component of the East Coast Greenway and the American Discovery Trail, which are national trail systems running from Maine to Florida and Delaware to California, respectively. This project is the result of an inter-jurisdictional planning and design team with broad public interest and support.

Prince George’s County will launch phases 1 and 1A of a 5-phase effort to deliver bikeshare to Prince George’s County, connecting with bikeshare systems in the region. A Maryland Bikeways Program award of $188,765 will go toward phase 1A, which includes installing four bikeshare stations in the National Harbor area. Phase 1, which is construction, was awarded $737,362.50 from the Transportation Alternatives Program. In Montgomery County, a $269,834 Maryland Bikeways Program award will be used to expand the Bethesda Trolley Trail Bikeshare network in Bethesda to Grosvenor Metro Station.

Install 4 bikeshare stations along the Bethesda Trolley Trail and at Grosvenor Metro station, connecting to the bikeshare network in Bethesda ($269,834). The award will fund final design, purchase and installation of the stations that will connect existing bikeshare in Bethesda with new grant-funded stations to be installed in White Flint and Twinbrook in the spring of 2018.

60% Design of a planned bikeway on New Hampshire Ave. (MD650) in Takoma Park between Auburn Ave. and Holton Ln., enhancing connections between the Ethan Allen Gateway, the Sligo Creek Stream Valley Trail, and the Takoma/Langley Crossroads area ($240,000)